Josh Brolin, star of No Country for Old Men and American Gangster, stars as George W. Bush in Oliver Stone’s W.

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Josh Brolin, star of No Country for Old Men and American Gangster, talks about his latest role as George W. Bush in Oliver Stone’s movie W.

It’s been an impressive few years for you, hasn’t it, enabling you to take the step up to play the lead in W. That was what I hoped, to respect the moment. I had a lot of opportunities and a lot of money came my way. I think it helps to have the ability to step back and say ‘am I going to feel comfortable looking back on this or am I going to feel like I took the first buck because I was so happy to be making a buck as opposed to six cents?

You ran the script for W. by your oldest son, which suggests you trust his judgement a great deal? Very much so. It doesn’t end with him, I would never put that kind of pressure on him but I’ve shown him a few scripts that I was thinking about doing and I think he has a good point of view. It’s an off-beat point of view, but I like his insight into characters and story.

Your father, James Brolin, is a successful actor, was that easy to come to terms with when you started out? I decided to get into the business early on after I took an acting class in school. Then I did a bunch of things that I’m sure my kids would never do. I made up a résumé, I lied, there were a lot of obstacles. People didn’t want there to be any nepotism, so they sometimes wouldn’t see me.”

Do you think W. offers a more sympathetic portrait of George Bush the man than people will expect? Sympathetic is a tough word to use because of what that administration has done. Am I more sympathetic towards the man? I don’t know, I just feel like I have more information now. There were moments where, the best thing for me just as a citizen, was to study the Republican point of view, study the evangelical point of view, and then the Bush administration and Bush himself.

How did you feel about him before embarking on this movie? I judged this guy as cosmetically as a lot of other people, that he’s just a stammering, stuttering idiot. You can’t be the president and just be an idiot, so I think that was very irresponsible and lazy of me, to write him off as that. Bush is very different from that. Some of his intentions are very pure, it’s just curtailed by what it gets corrupted by a lot of times – greed, fear, wanting to be re-elected and oil.

But just because you have a conviction that something’s right doesn’t mean it’s right does it? No. To me the best leader is somebody who can reassess a situation. They may have a conviction and they may have foresight that the rest of us don’t have, but the ability to reassess and create a different pathway is, to me, the sign of a great leader.

Large chunks of the American population trust him precisely because he’s not the smoothest of talkers, don’t they? I don’t think that’s accurate now but I think that was the case. I think that’s how he got voted into office, twice. I think people really hooked into this fallibility, after the elitism of Reagan and other presidents.

For some people the sexual indiscretions of Bill Clinton are tougher to forgive than anything Bush has done though, aren’t they? It’s phenomenal. He made a mistake, he lied and I think there’s been proper consequence for that, but to want to impeach somebody because of that and then not going forth with it is phenomenal. I’m stunned by some of the reactions of the American people who are against speaking up. There are these blogs that say ‘why does this guy speak up, why does Susan Sarandon say anything, why does Sean Penn say anything?’ We’re the ones that vote so we’re the ones who should speak up regardless of what job you have.

Oliver Stone was, briefly, in the same class as George Bush at Yale. It’s curious that these men have followed such different paths? Very different paths. When I was thinking about doing this role Oliver and I met at his house. I met his Mom who’s a staunch Republican, from France, very funny. I was surprised by that. Then I met his wife who is a true Christian. I thought wow, he hasn’t surrounded himself with a bunch of ‘yes’ people. He’s constantly challenging himself with the perception of other people.

So do you think audiences will be surprised by Oliver Stone’s portrait of George W Bush? I think so. We’re not out to slam anybody, we’re out to tell this very compelling story of a guy who was really flailing for many years, who decided to get sober on his own and then to deepen his whole relationship with Jesus, and became the President of the United States. Twice. That’s an amazing story.